


Empty Glass

by likebunnies



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Based on Promos, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Drinking, F/M, Ficlet, Mid-Season/Series 03 Hiatus, Missing Abbie Mills, Painkillers, Short One Shot, Spoilers for Episode: s03e09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 14:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5874721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likebunnies/pseuds/likebunnies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At night, Crane tries to escape the pain of missing Abbie by drinking. While he does that, is Abbie trying to find her way back?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Glass

**Author's Note:**

> ...and that sounds like a summary for a really crap story. Well, at least it's short. 
> 
> This story started a few weeks ago with the idea that Crane would want to find someway he could escape the pain of missing Abbie all day and then I added more based on the spoilers, pictures and ONE short promo video for episode 309/One Life. BUT mostly for the phrase written on the mirror. You know what I’m talking about if you have seen the promo. Of course, none of this will make sense or mean anything once the episode airs!

He had always enjoyed a drink while sitting on the porch swing and waiting for Abbie to come home, swirling the amber liquid around in the glass. He only felt truly content once he saw her car pull up the drive, waiting for her to take her shoes off and come out and join him. They would discuss her day and what he had cooked for dinner and it was all the simple ebb and flow of everyday life.

Now that she was gone, Ichabod Crane would still sit with a drink in his hand, in the cold, watching the neighbors pass in their cars. Watching kids walk by. Watching time go by so slowly, knowing that moment of contentment might never happen again. Instead he waited for that feeling of nothingness that came with enough drinks, with enough rum or enough Scotch. With finding the bottom of the bottle and then her bed.

Soon, that feeling wasn’t _nothing_ enough and he went into Abbie’s bathroom, to her medicine cabinet, and found the leftover pain killers from when he had been stabbed. He didn’t even want to take them then, for that pain, choosing instead to suffer through after that first night, worried Pandora would return for Abbie. This pain was greater than that stab wound. Greater than even a broad axe striking across his chest, taking his life away – or so he thought. His suffering wasn’t meant to end then – not when he could suffer again now.

He took two pills, which was one too many, and went to her bed, burying himself under her soft blankets once more. The scent of her had faded over the weeks but he knew it well enough that he could make himself believe it was there nonetheless. Everything started to slowly fade away and the pain in his heart and mind and the physical ache he felt throughout his body began to drain out of him. It was cheating. He knew it would only hurt worse in the morning. He’d have to face it again, the agony of not knowing where Abbie was. If she “was.” He needed this, though. He needed to not feel for one night. To not hear. To not see. _To be… nothing._

In his haze, with the faint smell of Abbie everywhere, he thought he could hear her voice. That wasn’t unusual. He would often hear – or at least think he heard – a soft “Crane” being said when he was working late in the archives, trying to figure this all out. He assumed it was no different than when he was a small child and he would hear his dead mother’s voice saying “Ichabod.” Except Abbie wasn’t dead. There was no way she was dead. He had seen his mother’s body, been forced to attend all the funerary rites and rituals and had to accept her death even with that disembodied voice calling him in the night. But until he held Abbie’s cold, lifeless body in his arms and could see and feel the proof for himself, she was alive. Somewhere. She had to be. At least with Katrina, he knew. He could escape differently… could try to run away from the pain. For this pain, he had to be here. There was no running.

Abbie’s voice was a sound so faint that he just let it fade into a fuzzy dream, unable to move a muscle even if he wanted to. And she was in his dreams. Just like she was every night.

He didn’t stir again until it was nearly noon and that damn Agent Foster was calling him, asking him about some lead that probably wasn’t a lead at all. She was waiting for him at the archives, along with Joe and Jenny and they were debating about sending someone over to Abbie’s house if he didn’t show up or answer his phone soon. She listened to him try to explain – lie, really – about why he wasn’t there yet and after a moment of silence, she said she would be by shortly to pick him up _if he was feeling up to it._ Crane slurred something about this being a good idea, which it was because he was in no condition to drive yet. Just give him an hour to shower and get dressed.

He really didn’t want to go into the archives and face another day of failure. He’d rather take another one of his pills and crawl back into bed for a few more hours of nothingness. Yet, he knew Abbie needed him. He could escape again tonight. It was when the hot water was pouring over him in his shower and he was nearly drifting off on a sea of sad thoughts he didn’t want to have that he could hear something again. A voice.Abbie’s? Someone was calling him and he might have been drifting but he was awake enough to hear that.

Crane turned off the water and quickly dried off, pulling on his bathrobe and looking out the bathroom door. Maybe Agent Foster had let herself in (for he never locked the front door just in case Abbie made her way home) and that was when he heard… something? He called out for the agent but she didn’t answer. It was too early for her to be here anyway and she was more the type to wait impatiently in the drive, honking that damnable horn.

He retrieved a weapon from his room and went searching, not sure he really wanted the answers to the questions racing through his brain. She didn’t have to be dead to hear her. He had heard her before, when she was in purgatory. The mirror. He turned back to look in the bathroom at the steamy mirror over his sink and there was nothing. Just his reflection lost behind a wet haze.

Something made an unearthly screeching noise behind him and he spun around, taking aim and then firing at… nothing. There was nothing except a fresh bullet hole in the wall. Yet he knew there had to have been something there. Surely there had been? Were the drugs playing with his mind that much? He had taken what would now be referred to as recreational drugs in his life before. His old life. His indigenous friends had introduced him to many things and this certainly didn’t feel like a hallucination. This felt like something tangible yet just out of reach.

He got dressed, hoping this noise and this feeling meant they were close to finding her. Surely he would be able to feel when his Abbie was close. He’d be able to hear her call from anywhere if she needed him. She found him before and she would be able to find him again, from purgatory or hell or from the next life. They were bound, were they not, the two Witnesses?

Crane went back into Abbie’s room, to straighten out her bed and to just stand there for a few minutes before the agent arrived to pick him up. He did this every day before he went to the work of trying to find her. After putting her pillows back in place, he turned to leave and that was when he saw it… the mirror. Abbie’s mirror.

HELP ME  
CRANE

 _God. She had been here!_ Or trying to get here… trying to get to him! And he had slept through it last night and was too addled in the head to get here fast enough this morning. He ran his hand close to the words, his fingers fluttering near them, puzzled and angry at himself for having felt the need to escape when she was so close. He fought the urge to break down in tears or kick himself, knowing none of that would do her any good.

 _Abbie. Oh, Abbie!_ So close. Could she see him, asleep in her bed, lost without her? How could he not know? He was disposing of those damn pills today. He’d leave them with Joe just in case one of them was ever injured again but he couldn’t do this again. His phone rang and he jumped, answering it as quickly as he could. It was Agent Foster, waiting for him outside.

“Agent,” Crane said. “You need to come upstairs. There’s something you need see. I think… I know this is important. The Lieu… Agent Mills needs us… me… more than ever. Please, just come inside.”

He hung up and turned to look at those three words a little bit longer.

“Oh my dearest Abbie. Hold on. I’ll help you. I’ll save you, my love,” Crane said, directly to the mirror, hoping beyond hope that she could hear him from wherever she was.

*^*^*^*^*^*^*

The End


End file.
